Well, OK, I can tell what day it is.  I just have to look at my online calendar, and the day is highlighted for me so that I don’t get confused.

What I am having a hard time with is interpreting dates that I’ve written down here or there.   Is anyone else noticing this issue?

Ever since I can remember, figuring out the date was pretty simple.  I realize now it was because all the elements of a written date were unique.  If you saw 5-17-96, it was pretty obvious it referred to May 17, 1996.  Even if you wrote 5-96, you knew right away that the date was referring to May of 1996.

And, that pattern has held true right up until 2009.  For example, 8-09 means that something happened in August of 2009.  Now, it’s all gotten messed up.  Why?

Because we are moving into the 2nd and succeeding decades of the 21st century!  Now, if I look back on notes I wrote a while back and see 1-10, I’m not sure what I meant.  Is that January 10th of some year, or January of 2010?  See the problem???

So, I’m considering changing the way I write dates.  If I mean just a month and year, I’ll have to use 2-2010.  I think sticking with 2-17-10 is still going to work because it includes the day and year.

Good heavens!  I have enough stuff to think about with confusing myself with writing a simple date.  But, I think that small change will work. If I remember to do it that way.  If anyone else has a better approach, I’d appreciate hearing about it.

Maybe that’s why the folks in Star Trek used “stardates”.  It was just a number as I recall, so each day had it’s own unique identifier.  Maybe we should be thinking about using that system before we all start showing up places at the right time, but the wrong day!